Variants

Logan's entry: The Troll’s Lovely Daughter

She appears when time is short and the traveler is eager to move on. At first sight she looks like an old woman lying in a ditch. Upon closer inspection, her nose is inhumanly large, she has a mouth full of sharp, finger-length teeth, and a tail like a cow’s can be seen pinned under one leg.

The frightful creature will wail and cry, telling the adventurer that she’s fallen ill and her mother is looking for her. The hero will hear the voice of a woman in the distance fussing over her lovely daughter who is missing. The troll in the ditch will ask for the sap of seven trees that are scattered throughout the woods. The first character to commit to helping her will be rewarded with one reroll per session for which they need to describe how the elements shift to help them.

Instinct: Test the compassion of those in a hurry

Fill their minds with the desperate call of a parent

Confuse the path

Influence a companion animal

Ray's Hook-Nosed Sand Troll

Today their realm is a terrifying desert of harsh winds and sliding dunes, but once it was a lush, dense forest. The elves dwelled in it, and as happens with places they dwell in, the trees began to awake. But nearly two centuries ago the desert to the south began encroaching on the forest. Why did the climate change? Did it have anything to do with the rise of The Bone Lord? Who knows.

The trolls of the forest remained, walking among the ghosts of trees that can no longer be seen by anyone but themselves. They are tall and thin with whipcord muscles and splayed feet. They have lost their voices and speak only with slow, weaving gestures of their long arms and spidery hands. Humans call them the sand stalkers because they gather around interlopers to drive them out. The elves call them the Guardians. Either way, interlopers disturb the ruminations of these strange creatures, disrupting their connection to the spirit world by simply interjecting a focal point of reality. The trolls always want to drive out other intelligent species not indigenous to the area – by force if necessary.

(Cannot regenerate unless recently hydrated by a freak rainstorm or an oasis. Not particularly susceptible to fire because of their dense tissues.)